Women and Oil

Dr. Consolate Kabonesa is the Head of Makerere University’s Gender Department. She carried out a study in the Bunyoro Region of the Albertine Region in 2010, which discovered that women were missing out on jobs and other benefits in the oil and gas industry because of their low education, inadequate skills, as well as their demanding roles as mothers and wives.

Oil in Uganda caught up with her at her office at Makerere University, where she urged government to empower women in order for them to cash in on the oil industry.

She explained that corruption in the oil sector would hinder the delivery of social services, and the impact would ultimately be felt mostly by the women . Read More

45 % of the respondents said they were facing increasing difficulty in accessing firewood due to oil activity (Photo: S. Wandera-Kigorobya, Hoima)

The majority of the communities in the Albertine Region are unhappy with the oil companies operating there, according to findings of a study commissioned by International Alert, an international peace-building NGO.

When asked if they were “satisfied with the interaction/dialogue with oil companies”, 62 % of the respondents said they were not. An even bigger proportion (80 %) reported that they were particularly concerned that the oil companies had not released any statement to address any of their concerns. Read More

Transparency and access to information will be the key demands and objectives of the Civil Society Coalition on Oil and Gas (CISCO) under its newly elected Chair, Irene Sekyana.

“We want to see how the coalition can be broadened out to reach grass roots people in the oil producing areas because they are vulnerable and they will be impacted most by oil and gas development” Ms. Sekyana told Oil in Uganda. “We want to reach these people and give them information and then see how they can use that to advocate for having their rights respected—property rights, land rights, environmental rights and social rights.” Read More

Summaya Athmani, head of Kenya’s National Oil Company, apeals for regional collaboration on oil infrastructure

Updated, November 15, 2012, with exclusive interview added.

Speakers at an East Africa Oil and Gas Summit in Nairobi yesterday urged the region’s governments to cooperate and harmonise their plans for processing and transport infrastructure.

“We are not competing with Uganda,” the Managing Director of Kenya’s National Oil Corporation, Summaya Hassan Athmani, told delegates. “The challenge is to expand our thinking beyond national boundaries and to think about this as a regional issue.” Read More

Greenwatch produced this community environmental monitoring guide with support from the Open Society Institute

WANSEKO VILLAGE, BULIISA DISTRICT: Surrounded by a dozen women and men seated on the bare ground, Mary Nabanja goes through the financial records of her group in a large book, counting each penny of their group savings.

Nabanja is the chairwoman of the Buliisa Women’s Environmental Protection and Savings Group, based in Wanseko village, some 450 kilometres from Kampala.

Those who had not yet paid up bring their balances forward, and the meeting turns to the day’s main agenda—environmental protection.

Richard Kajura, who facilitates the meeting, begins by going through the fauna and flora that their region is proud of—including parks, lakes and rivers and the climate itself. Read More